Imitating a suicidal hanging scene from a TV show cost an 8-year-old girl her life in Hapur on Tuesday evening.
As narrated by Hapur SP Hemant Kutiyal, Simran had gone to her neighbour’s house to play, where she, along with other children, watched a popular TV crime show. After watching it, the children who were between the age of 7 and 10 years, decided to play ‘phansi, phansi’, apparently taking a cue from an incident of hanging shown in the show.
The children decided that Simran will try it first and she was asked to stand up on a bucket placed on the bed. A rope was tied to the ceiling fan and she was directed to put the noose around her neck. Simran reportedly slipped from the bucket and the noose got tightened around her neck, choking her to death.
The children got scared and instead of helping her, they ran away. Later they came back to the room and saw Simran hanging from the ceiling fan. They gathered the courage to loosen the noose from her neck and brought her down on to the floor. Finding her motionless, the children got terrified. They hid her body with a sack in the other room and left.
The incident came to the notice of the family members in the night and they reported the matter to the police. “Initially we suspected hands of family members behind the crime but later children who were watching TV together narrated the incident during the investigation,” the SP said. The body was handed over to family after the post-mortem.